Stardrifter Infinite - Chapter One
by ShinobiWolf
Summary: Azuri's ship, the Infinite, has shut down for diagnostics and repairs, leaving her in the dark. Suddenly, nightmarish dreams and visions begin to blur the line between the real and the unreal. Could there be an intruder on board? Can Azuri get a grip on reality before the nightmares become her reality?


"You know, Azu, if you bait the hook this way, the worm won't be so likely to wiggle off and be stolen by the fish," said an elderly male voice. She turned to look at him.

"Oh, I see. Like this?" she asked, trying to mimic what he'd done.

"That's the way! Now toss it in the water."

Azuri drew her fishing rod back over her shoulder, pressed the release lever, and flung it forward. The lure glided through the air gracefully, landing in the water with a _plop_ several meters away. She relaxed her grip and looked over at her grandfather, who was sipping a bottle of beer from underneath his bucket hat. The label had numbers on it instead of words, she noticed. They probably had some significance, but she wasn't into beer.

The water gently rocked the canoe and splashed against the sides. The morning sun hit her face and a soothing breeze ran through her hair, warming and cooling her skin at the same time and providing the most blissfully perfect balance imaginable.

Azuri dipped her hand into the water while she waited for a tug on her lure. The water was oddly warm… and thick. Strange, she thought. As she brought her hand up, she froze. Her hand was covered with a dark red liquid. She peered over the side of the boat. Her eyes widened. From the sides of the boat to as far as her she could see, the entire lake was a deep red color. Looking closer, she noticed dead fish floating to the surface, some skeletons, others with rotting flesh still attached, their pale blue eyes glazed over.

"N-No... this isn't right..." she stammered, "It wasn't like this a minute ago! Grandpa? What's going on?"

No response came. She turned to look at him.

He was sitting motionless, his back turned, his fishing rod pointed out toward the water. She put a hand on his shoulder and tugged.

"Grandpa?"

To her horror, his clothes were ragged and frayed. Spider webs were strung from his chin to his chest and in the crevices of his hat. His eyes were gone, replaced by two parched hollow sockets veiled in shadow. His skin was badly withered and dry like paper, and his mouth was frozen open in a sickening pose. It was as if he'd been sitting there for hundreds of years. She stared for a few seconds in horror, unable to speak.

"_What the fuck_?" Azuri screamed, suddenly sitting up and forcing her eyes open.

Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her breathing was heavy and quick. It took her a second or two to realize where she was. The room was completely dark. She felt her pillow behind her, the soft mattress under her, and the cool sheets on her bare legs. She reached up to rub her eyes, trying to calm herself down and slow her heart rate.

"Oh man… that was fucked up," she mumbled to herself.

"Cecilia?" she called.

There was no answer.

"That's funny. Systems are still offline. I don't remember level five diagnostics taking more than eight hours,"

She sighed. "Oh well, guess I'm on my own for breakfast."

Azuri took a minute to let out a yawn and stretch, then reached over to fish around in her nightstand drawer for her music player. She plugged the earbuds in, turned it on, and used the glow of the screen to slip on her favorite and most comfortable shirt: a white short-sleeved tee with "88" printed in large purple numbers on the front and back. She remembered how Cecilia would scold her for wearing it too often. She got up, deciding not to cover her black boyshorts, and began to find her way to the door while techno-trance music thumped and hummed in her ears.

"At least this thing still works," she muttered to herself, flipping to the next track. She wedged the door open, inched through, and slid it closed behind her with a bit of effort, hoping the power wouldn't be out for too much longer.

She noticed her dogtag necklace begin to rise up off her chest as she left her quarters were the gravity was more like Earth's. Kicking off the floor, she floated up the small empty elevator shaft. The music seemed to go perfectly with the feeling of weightlessness. She closed her eyes for a moment to enjoy the bliss before stopping at the top, where the doors to the main section were.

Azuri sighed and mustered the strength to open them enough to slide through. It was very dark and quiet inside. Using the light from her music player as a flashlight, she bounded across the floor in large, slow leaps. Her gravity generator wasn't hooked up to the elevator shaft, but it kept her somewhat grounded in the rest of the ship-just the way she liked it.

She noted that it was unsettling, almost spooky, with no lights on. Even though it was the same ship she'd always known, it seemed somehow different in the dark. The occasional creak of the ship's hull, bending and flexing from the forces exerted upon it, the absence of Cecilia's ubiquitous voice, the noticable lack of any kind of engine noise, it all made her a bit uneasy. These metal walls surrounding her, she reminded herself, were the only things standing between her and a decidedly unpleasant death.

She made her way down the narrow tunnel, lined with pipes, wires, and the occasional control panel, following it as it curved to the right while the next song played in her earphones. Just as her bare foot touched the cold metal floor, she heard faint whispering.

"That's weird," she thought, "I don't remember whispering in this song,"

A few seconds later, she heard it again, definitely out of order with the music. Unable to make out the words, she stopped to concentrate her senses.

There it was again. This time, she felt a very slight vibration in the air, as if someone was speaking in front of her. She quickly paused the song. She pressed her lips together and frowned a bit, narrowing her vision toward the corridor up ahead. She held her breath and listened in complete silence for a few seconds.

She thought she heard sound, but it was very soft and faint. So faint, she wasn't sure if she was imagining it or not.

Suddenly, she felt hot breath in her ear as a voice made a distinct sound in a hushed tone. It was only a single syllable, lasting no more than half an instant. She froze as the heat and breath seemed to pass down below her ear, around to the back of her neck, and vanish. Her left hand shot up to cover her neck as she spun around. She uttered a surprised gasp.

The first thing she saw was two dark holes, about eye level, and what looked like a wide grinning mouth.

Her heart thumped in her chest as she took a moment to focus her vision. Two black circular vents were fixed side by side to a wall panel that jutted out behind her. A wide and narrow digital screen sat below it on the panel, used to display information about the ship's environment when the power was on.

"Oh, hi," she said to the face-like shapes in a sarcastic tone. "Come here often?"

She took a deep breath, rubbing the back of her neck. "Okay... I'm gonna pretend that didn't happen," she whispered.

Without warning, the screen under the circular vents flickered and flashed a set of numbers, then shut off again before she could read it.

"The hell?" she said aloud. "I hope that was part of the diagnostic."

More whispering suddenly cut her off. She could swear it came from just up ahead, around the corner. She still couldn't make out any words, only a sound here and there, but it sounded like the voice was saying something. She shuddered, noting that she was very definitely the only living being aboard her ship, last she checked.

"Who's there? Answer me!" she called out.

No response.

Taking a deep breath, she traveled further down the corridor, hoping very much that she wouldn't see some sort of humanoid figure standing there.

This was her ship, and she had always felt safe and powerful on it, secure in the knowledge that this was her castle and she was the sole occupant and ruler of her little kingdom. The very thought of another person walking around scared her half to death. She mustered the courage to press on, eager to find the source and put her fears to rest, while making a mental note to inform Cecilia about the whispering when the power came back on.

She reached the corner and peeked around it. To her surprise, the hallway ahead appeared to end abruptly. She drew closer, shining her light all around the walls. There appeared to be no exit, no doorway where there should have been. It was solid wall, and little else. She pounded on the wall twice, with no result. The wall absorbed her blows completely; there was no sound or vibration, as there would have been if this was a door. She appeared to be trapped. Confused, wondering if maybe she took a wrong turn in the darkness, she started back the way she came.

She made it no more than a meter when she began to feel a sharp, intense pressure in her head. It felt like pulsing waves of pain, so intense that she could hardly stand on her own two feet. She hunched over and shut her eyes, wincing as she let out a pained sigh. She felt her legs buckle and give out. She could feel herself falling...

Falling...

Falling...

Surely she should have hit the floor by now, she thought. She tried to take a breath, but realized she couldn't breathe. She opened her eyes a bit as she gasped for air. She looked around.

She was no longer in the corridor outside her quarters. In fact, she was no longer aboard the ship at all. She found herself in the vacuum of space, gazing upon her ship's port side. The words painted on the hull, "STARDRIFTER INFINITE", crossed her vision as the ship drifted in front of her. She shut her eyes tightly, unable to comprehend.

What seemed like a couple of seconds later, she opened them again, meeting complete darkness. Finding she could breathe again, she assumed she was no longer outside the airlock. She pressed a button on her music player, bringing the screen to life again. The light revealed that she was back in bed in her quarters, the familiar sheets once again covering her bare legs.

"Was that a dream?" she wondered. She felt her shoulders. The soft silky cloth of her white "88" shirt met her fingertips. "No, it wasn't. I'm still wearing the shirt I just put on..." she trailed off, utterly confused. "What the hell just happened?" she asked aloud, mostly to herself, her voice displaying a trace of fear.

She threw off the covers and hopped over to the sliding door, wedging it open. An odd blue-green light met her eyes. Instead of the small elevator shaft outside her room, a hallway led straight off into the distance.

The pale light seemed to be ambient, but no source was visible. Stepping out into the hall, the walls and floor seemed to be made of carved stone. Hieroglyphs or runes of some sort lined the walls in neat rows, lit by the odd light that appeared to be coming from the wall itself, somehow.

Exploring further, she reached a small alcove in the right wall, hiding a tall chest of drawers in the recess. One of the drawers was open slightly, revealing a shiny golden pendant inside, inlaid with blue and black marble stones, with a small chain attached which was draped over the edge of the drawer.

"What?" she muttered under her breath. "This isn't my ship! How did I get here? What is this place? It's too real for a dream."

Another whisper echoed through the hall, this time sounding like it might be coming from another recess in the wall up ahead.

"Hello?" she called out, "I can hear you, but I need you to speak up!" Azuri turned her head to listen for a reply.

"...endant..." came a soft whisper, this time sounding like it was behind her. She still couldn't guess whether it was male or female, or how old.

"Huh? Pendant?" Azuri asked. She went back to the alcove with the drawers. "You mean this pendant?"

She looked closer, noticing that though it appeared to be an artifact of some ancient civilization, it was inscribed with some very familiar-looking Arabic numerals.

She pulled the drawer open a bit further, then slipped her hand inside to reach for it. As her fingertips made contact with the small bauble, she gasped suddenly. It was searing hot, though oddly, she could feel no heat until she touched it. She quickly withdrew her hand.

Immediately, another intense headache came on without warning, this one more painful than the last.

Azuri groaned, shutting her eyes tightly and leaning against the wall as she slowly sank to the ground under the throbbing pain. Her mouth fell open. She dropped her music player and pressed her fingertips hard into her temples. She opened her eyes.

Her vision a bit blurred, her head still pulsing and throbbing, she struggled to make sense of what she witnessed before her eyes. Her skin immediately felt cold again. Bitter, unforgiving cold that chilled her bare legs to the bone. She looked around. There was nothing but the empty void of space. Her ship was nowhere to be seen.

What she could see, however, was surreal: some distance in front of her, some sort of structure hung in space, bathed in bright blue light coming from behind it. The structure, or structures, appeared to be a series of wide arches made from some type of metal or stone. Judging by the scaffolding attached to some of them, she guessed they were built by intelligent beings. The small sections that jutted out from their sides at regular intervals reminded her of interconnected vertebrae forming a curved spine-like shape. Some of the arches were bound together by chains to form a more complete circle, while others simply floated in formation without guidance. They were arranged in circular patterns that extended far out in front of her, forming some kind of tunnel or gate. As she gazed through the middle, she could see the light source. It seemed to burn like a bright blue flame, pulsing like a heartbeat as sheets of light and energy seemed to spin and rotate, flowing upon itself, and yet the object never moved.

All she could do was stare in awe at the wonderous sight. She had never seen anything so magnificent, nor could she have ever imagined it. It was massive enough to dwarf a small planet, she guessed. She couldn't help but feel tiny and insignificant next to this impressive, awesome scene.

She winced as her headache returned. It seemed to be throbbing and pulsing in perfect unison with the blue energy beyond the gate-almost as though this ball of energy was the cause of it. Azuri began to clutch at her chest as she gasped, in vain, for air. She could feel her face turn blue and her blood rushing to the surface. Her vision blurred, and then faded into darkness. Her mind went numb.

She awoke suddenly, coughing and wheezing. She found that she was curled in the fetal position on a floor somewhere, her music player on the floor next to her, earbuds still inside her ears.

"Captain, are you alright?" came Cecilia's almost-monotone voice. Even though it lacked emotion, there was no sound Azuri wanted to hear more at this moment.

"Ce-Cecilia..." she croaked, panting heavily. "Holy shit, am I alive?"

"Yes, Captain. The fuel rod installation was successul, and the diagnostic has completed. All systems are online and functioning at maximum-"

"Cecilia!" Azuri shouted, still trying to catch her breath.

"Yes, Captain?"

"I need you to help me figure out what's been going on."

"Could you be more specific, please?"

"I need to know if anything weird went on while you were shut off. Check your logs from the time you shut down to now. "

"Please wait while I scan the data. Is there anything specific I should be looking for?" Azuri looked at the floor, pressing her hand onto it and rubbing gently, feeling the smooth texture on her palm, making sure it was real and solid.

"I... I don't know," she stammered. "Anything that isn't normal. Bugs in the system, glitches, spacial distortions, gravity abnormalities, electromagnetic energy leaks, anything."

"Spacial distortions? Do you have any evidence of such an occurance?"

"I went to sleep before you shut down," Azuri began, "and I woke up, went down the hall, and the corridor was a dead end. It wasn't a dream either. I was awake. I'm still wearing the shirt I put on when I got up."

"Noted. Please continue."

"Then I got this massive headache and somehow I was outside the airlock, looking at the ship. Then I was back in bed, then I was in some weird kind of temple. And there was this pendant or whatever, and then I was suddenly out in space again, looking at these weird arches that formed a tunnel that led to this... this... ball of fire, and my headache was pounding with the same rhythm as the energy. What do you make of all that, Cecilia?"

"Based on the information you have provided, there are currently 157 possible explanations for such occurances. Providing additional information would help to narrow the possibilities."

"Alright, let me think..." Azuri closed her eyes and recalled the events. "The whispering! I kept hearing whispering, I remember that. A-And numbers kept appearing, first in my dream, then after I woke up."

"Exposure to electromagnetic energy is known to cause feelings of paranoia and unease in humans. However, I am not detecting any on board. Were you able to comprehend the whisper?"

"No. It was like, just out of reach. I know it was saying something, but I couldn't understand. It was disembodied too. Sometimes it was in front of me, sometimes it was behind, but I never saw who was doing it."

"Understood. Please describe the numbers now."

"The numbers..." Azuri recalled every instance she saw the numbers. In her dream, on grandpa's beer bottle, on the wall panel screen, on the pendant. "I can't remember. I think there was a five, and a three, and a one, but I don't remember the order. There were three sets of them all in a line."

"Analyzing," Cecilia responded, pausing for a few seconds. Azuri took a deep breath and rolled onto her back, propping her feet up on the wall. She began rubbing her thighs, trying to generate heat and get her blood flowing.

"I have found five occurances of invalid numeric values in the diagnostic data that was collected. These numbers are out of syntax and do not correspond with the data in which they appear," Cecilia said after a minute or so.

Azuri got up, clipped her music player to her waist, hung the earbuds around her neck, and jogged toward the ship's bridge. She sat in the Captain's chair and pressed a button on the arm of the chair, bringing up the neon blue holographic display around her.

"Alright Cecilia, gimme those numbers in the order they appear."

A jumbled string of 18 digits appeared before her. They didn't mean much. It could've been anything, Azuri realized. An account number, someone's pilot license number, an amount of money, even the serial number from a candy bar wrapper. She stared at them, trying to make sense of them, considering that they might not be random. Using her fingers, she pulled the numbers apart into three sets.

"Those look like coordinates," she half-whispered to herself. "Cecilia, if these were coordinates, where would they be?"

The numbers shrunk and moved to the side of the display to make room for a large map of the galaxy. A red blinking dot appeared somewhere in the glowing nucleus.

"That can't be anything. Could you arrange the sets another way?"

"Without changing the groups themselves, there are six possible arrangements."

"Okay, map them out." Five more blinking dots appeared spread throughout the map. "Yeah..." Azuri muttered. "This isn't telling me anything. Most of these point to gas giants or volatile areas. Nowhere we could visit. What if you arranged them another way?"

Cecilia didn't reply.

"Cecilia? Can you arrange the numbers another way?"

A few seconds passed in silence.

"Captain, I've detected an unauthorized command in my system."

"What? Is someone trying to hack us?"

"Unlikely. It is a single command that was inserted into my code sometime during the diagnostic. Origin unknown."

"What was the command? What happened?" Azuri demanded, sounding worried.

"I have isolated and scanned the command line. It was not harmful to my system in any way that I can detect. It has instructed me to arrange the numbers in a certain pattern, and to initiate a particle scan of the surrounding area."

"The hell?" Azuri said, frowning with confusion. "Go ahead and do it, then. I guess it can't hurt."

"Scan in progress using parameters provided. In the meantime, here are the numbers appearing as the command dictates."

Azuri examined the map. "That completely scrambles the numbers. I never would've guessed they went in this order. So that leaves us..." She traced her finger along the grid, stopping near the outer edge of one of the spiral arms. "...here."

She sighed, disappointed. "It points to empty space. Another dead end."

"Captain, a preliminary analysis of the auditory information collected during the diagnosis indicates sonic vibrations in patterns consistent with speech."

"How come it takes you a billion words to say you heard the whispering?"

"Ignoring that last comment," Cecilia replied sharply, "I have filtered out sounds matching your vocal patterns. I will play the remainder now."

Bars, graphs, and numbers appeared on the holographic display, reading out information as the sound clip played. It was faint, and it almost sounded ilke another language, though none she recognized. There were sharp inhalations and odd inflexions, making the words sound very odd.

"Cecilia," Azuri said, pausing the recording, "I have an idea. Play this backwards, from the top."

The clip began playing again, this time sounding more natural, as a person would normally speak.

"...eyak... doshtam... fanshim..." It went on for several minutes. Azuri listened intently to every sound. She still couldn't make out the words.

"Cecilia, can you transcribe the words? Spell them out if you have to." The words popped up on the screen. "Does this match any language you know of?" Azuri asked.

"Played backwards, the root sounds and basic words are somewhat similar to a language that was discovered to have been in use by an ancient civilization on Earth known as Atlantis. However, my knowledge of this language is incomplete. I will need time to extrapolate the data and make educated guesses for a translation."

"Atlantian? Huh..." Azuri processed what Cecilia said for a moment, gently rubbing her bottom lip with her finger as she stared at the words. "If the voice was backwards, then... Cecilia, reverse the numbers and plot them on the map."

Another red dot appeared. Azuri put her hands on either side of the dot and pulled them apart, zooming in on the sector, then on the star system. The marker appeared to point to empty space outside the orbit of any of the planets.

"Is there anything there?" Azuri asked.

"The Pleyak system," Cecilia explained, "is home to-"

"Hold on, Pleyak?" Azuri interrupted quickly.

"Yes, four planets orbit the star known as Pleyak-542."

"That sounds like one of the words I heard in the recording. Sorry, go ahead."

"The system is largely uninhabited," Cecilia continued, "except for a small science team from the Gaia Alliance of Earth invesigating Pleyak-542 Beta, the second planet from the star."

"Yeah, that's nice. What about the marker? Is anything there?" Azuri asked impatiently.

"The science team in the system reported detecting a high concentration of chroniton particles concentrated on that spot."

"Chroniton particles?" Azuri whispered to herself, "That means... what does that mean, again?"

"To be concise, chroniton particles are left behind by FTL, or faster than light travel. There are several explanations for this. However, no artificial energy signature is present. These appear to be a naturally occuring concentration, rather than a residual trail left by a manmade device."

"Why would they be there? What would cause it?" Azuri wondered.

"Unknown. However, current theories state that rapid space-time displacement anomalies, or wormholes, are thought to exist in areas such as this."

"Say we visit this thing, and it is a wormhole. Where does it go and how would we get back?"

"Unknown. A one-way wormhole could lead to a pocket dimension from which there is no escape, or another place in the universe. A two-way wormhole would allow safe passage both ways, provided it is stable. Unstable wormholes may open and close as conditions dictate, seemingly at random. It is unlikely a living being could survive entering an unstable one, since many factors could result in the being's death."

"This is crazy!" Azuri exclaimed. "So you're saying some weird, creepy, disembodied voice told us to go to this star system, gave us coordinates to... something... out in the middle of nowhere, and... what about the scan? Anything turn up?"

"The scan is not yet complete, but preliminary results indicate a large concentration of particles in a state of quantum flux around the ship, inside and outside."

"And that means?"

"It is impossible to tell without further analysis, but it would seem to indicate that quantum activity has been occuring nearby. If you experienced being in multiple places, then you may very well have experienced a quantum shift anomaly. In short, one possible explanation for your disorienting experience is that you were shifting, or teleporting, through space, and possibly time."

Azuri stared blankly, blinking a few times.

"Are you serious?" she uttered in disbelief.

"I am not telling an elaborate joke, if that is your question."

"So that stuff I saw, the weird temple place, and that weird gate, were all real."

"It is impossible to tell how far you traveled. No structures matching the description of this gate-like object are known."

"But if we visit that place, we might find answers. How long will it take to get there?"

"At maximum speed, one week, three days, 11 hours, 52 minutes, 46 seconds-"

"Thank you, Cecilia."

"However, there is a space station on the way. I would suggest resupplying there. Extra fuel rods, food, and oxygen tanks are recommended."

"Yeah, some real food would be nice."

"I also recommend you keep a low profile, Captain. Your standing with the authorities is-"

"Not the greatest, to put it lightly. I know. I'd better let things cool down before I show my face in public." Azuri lowered her eyes to the floor.

"Captain, a ship is approaching. It appears to be vectoring directly toward us."

"On screen." Azuri said, closing the holographic display. The large main screen in front of her came to life, showing a ship with the Red Giant Parts Delivery logo on it. "Didn't they just deliver us those fuel rods? Magnify." The image enlarged and sharpened. "No, this isn't the same ship. And that logo was painted on by hand. It looks kinda sloppy."

"I cannot obtain their license or registration information," Cecilia reported.

"Probably pirates," Azuri muttered under her breath.

"They are signaling us, Captain. Audio only."

"Put 'em on."

"Hey, this is Jack from Red Giant Parts," said a gruff-sounding male voice, "It seems one of the, uh... fuel rods we delivered was defective. We'd like to replace it, free of charge!" He sounded like an unrefined man trying to sound professional. Azuri muted the call.

"Cecilia?"

"I completed a scan of the fuel rods prior to installing them. All power cells were free of abnormalities and continue to function normally," she replied.

"That's what I thought. You know what to do, Cecilia."

"Understood, Captain. Resuming call." Azuri cleared her throat.

"Yes! Thank you boys so much," she said in her sweetest, most cheerful voice. "It has been acting up, now that you mention it. That would be so nice of you! You can just come right aboard whenever you're ready!"

"Sure thing, Miss," the voice said after a short pause. "We'll just come check things out first." He ended the call.

"Yeah, I'll bet," Azuri mumbled. She reached under the seat for her plasma pistol and took it with her as she walked out the door toward the airlock.


End file.
